Hair coloring is the art of dying selected strands or sections of hair to achieve a desired appearance. Coloring includes a number of variations, such as highlighting, streaking, lowlighting, frosting, tipping and color texturing.
Prior art hair coloring procedures are difficult, cumbersome and limited with respect to results. One such procedure is described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,349,781 to Poole et al. A hair stylist parts the hair of a person into sectors by combing one sector of hair over the top of the person's head. A protective sheet of material is placed adjacent to the lower portion of the sector. A lower layer of hair is combed from the laid-up sector down onto the protective sheet. A brush having a series of spaced tufts of bristles is used to apply spaced parallel streaks of dye to the layer of hair on the protective sheet. A second protective sheet is then placed on the treated layer and a second layer of laid-up hair is combed downwardly onto the second sheet. The brush is again used to form parallel shadings of hair. This is continued for each sector of the person's scalp.
Another known procedure is to place a cap having a number of holes onto the head of a person. Depending upon the desired pattern of hair shading, strands of the person's hair are pulled through the holes in the cap. The exposed strands can then be colored using one shade or several different shades of dye.
A third known procedure of hair treatment providing different shades of hair coloring is to dip a brush into a first shade of dye solution and use the brush to apply the first shade in a random pattern, whereafter the brush is dipped into a second shade of dye solution and is used to apply the second shade between previously dyed areas of hair. This can be repeated for each shade that is desired.
There are a number of disadvantages to use of these procedures. Self-application is difficult, particularly if hair at the back of a person's scalp is to be dyed. At a beauty salon, hair highlighting is time consuming and expensive.
French Patent No. 1588459 to G. Christ describes a hair coloring brush having cylindrical disks that each carry an array of equidistantly spaced tufts of bristles. The bristles in each tuft form a tapering configuration. Typically, the disks are locked in place during use, but the French reference notes that in certain instances the disks could be mobile in terms of rotation on the brush body on which the disks are located. However, there is no indication of how the mobility should be achieved. While the prior art brush may provide an improvement to applying coloring or tinting, the regular pattern of tufts on each disk and the configuration of the bristles in a tuft limit the naturalness of the results. A natural appearance of sun-bleaching is often a goal in the process of coloring a person's hair. Sun-bleaching achieves a somewhat random pattern of highlighting that is difficult to initiate with the type of brush described in the French reference. Moreover, the circular configuration of bristles in a tuft restricts the volume of solution that can be retained by the tuft, since the bristles are caused to flare outwardly, leaving spaces between bristles.
Another method that is even more difficult to practice without the aid of a skilled stylist is one that includes wrapping strands to be dyed with one or more shades of color within an aluminum foil. Regardless of which of the above-described procedures is used, a certain amount of discomfort or unreliability accompanies the process.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a hair treatment brush for applying a solution in a user-selected pattern, wherein the brush facilitates quick and easy self-application with reasonable comfort and with results that provide an appearance of naturalness. It is a further object to provide such a brush that enables the user to simultaneously apply several shades of hair coloring.